Pinned
by CriticsCubby
Summary: She had noticed the change a few weeks ago, but didn't know why it had occurred until today.


**Pinned**

**Disclaimer** - Don't own anything Elementary/Holmes related, just writing for my own amusement.

**Summary** - She had noticed the change a few weeks ago, but didn't know why it had occurred until today.

**A/N** - It's been a _WHILE_. Still not 100% sure I'm "back", but I'm trying? Sort of.

* * *

She saw him every day. Hell, she saw him almost every minute of every day. And yet, she didn't notice that anything had changed until recently. It wasn't a drastic change, no, and she really shouldn't have felt as bad that she neglected to spot it as she did, but in living with Sherlock Holmes, one of the world's greatest detectives, one begins to see every minor infraction as a monumental mistake. Deciding that it was better just to ask, instead of letting more time pass attempting to investigate the matter on her own, Watson dove in.

"What happened to your old pin?" she asked light heartedly between sips of soup, across from him at the table. He looked up but didn't respond right away, choosing instead to take a bit of bread and dipping it into his bowl of soup.

"The pin you have on your coat...it's different. Did you lose the other one or something?" She pressed.

"'Or something', I suppose, if those are the only two options you've deemed possible." He said in a stilted tone.

"You know what I meant, Sherlock. It would be much simpler around here if you didn't insist on taking everything I say so literally." She let her spoon clang into her now-empty bowl and scooted her chair away from the table, arms crossing against her chest.

"I do not take _everything_ literally, Watson, and I do not appreciate your blanket assumption that I do. For example, just last week you asked if I would bring you 'about a hundred' napkins to your room when you had that dreadful milk catastrophe and I did not. I brought you exactly eleven napkins, as I knew that one hundred napkins would have been far too many and a waste of a natural resource." He retorted in a huff.

"'Milk catastrophe'?" Smiling, breaking some of the tension.

"It was a rather large mess, Watson. I'm honestly surprised you were able to salvage your notebook." He replied, scooting away from the table but remaining seated.

"If I remember correctly, it was actually you that caused the 'Milk Catastrophe'. Bursting into my room unannounced, shouting something about Clyde's plan to take over the world RIGHT when I took a gulp of warm milk."

"Yes, well, one would think that after all this time, you wouldn't be so unaccustomed to the sound of my voice, Watson." His tone, though still light and jovial, took on a warmth that caught Watson off guard. Before she had a chance to respond, though, Sherlock began again.

"You asked about my pin and I brushed it aside. I'm still not completely comfortable talking about my feelings, even with you. Though, I do know that the relief I find when sharing my thoughts with a willing listener is worth the risk. The pin...the pin I had before was one that was gifted to me. Normally, tokens such as that hold little value to me; I don't see the point in carrying around the countless artifacts people bestow upon me. Box-bee excluded, of course." With that clarification, he looked up, making brief eye-contact with an intently-listening Watson; breaking the connection quickly, he continued, "This particular token, however, was something I could not bring myself to throw out." He pulled at his sleeves, making the lengths of each arm even on his wrists.

"When it was presented to me, it was given along with a watch that I quickly pawned. For the longest time, however, I could not bring myself to part with the pin; trivial as it may seem, it was one of the last things I had that she had given to me. Irene Adler was a lot of things, a bestower of tokens was not one of them. So, I kept it. I wore it on my lapel to remind me of what I had lost. Once I found out who she was...what she was...I couldn't bare to keep it." He finished, looking away from Watson, into the next room, into the past.

"What did you do with it?" She queried, quietly.

"Tossed it over the Brooklyn Bridge. It seemed fitting, at the time." Looking back towards her, he straightened in his seat.

"And the new pin?" Ever on track with her quest.

"The new pin is also a token, of sorts. While it is not something that was gifted to me directly, it has come to represent a much larger gift than one could feasibly where on a lapel." He smirked slightly at that.

"One of the first moments in our relationship, before we embarked officially into our partnership, you were reading over one of the case files of a job I worked several years prior. It was an easy case, I discovered the perpetrator within minutes of taking it on. You took that file, though, and you read it, and the way you came to the same answers I did was remarkable to me. Rudimentary, of course, you had had no training as of yet; but you drew the same conclusion as I did with a speed that I found intriguing. Do you remember that case?" His question caught her off guard and she struggled for a moment to recall it.

"That was the...Royal Marines case?" As she said it, she instantly realized why the logo on his pin had looked so familiar.

"Precisely! A simple case of theft and mistaken identity; the case itself matters not. I saw this pin in a shop not too long ago, and it seemed only fitting that I replace that ghastly reminder of the lie that almost killed me with a reminder of the life that gave mine back. So, there you have it." He concluded softly, clapping his hands together lightly. He looked up to see Watson sitting, staring away from him, towards the room where his coat, pin in place, lay draped over a chair.

Sherlock stood, breaking her concentration, and collected first his bowl and then hers.

"At least this meal didn't require mass clean-up mid-consumption. I daresay, Watson, your ability to expel liquid is quite impressive. The distance you achieved with that one gulp of milk!"

And with a bit of a laugh from him and a roll of Watson's eyes in return, the moment passed.


End file.
